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Yet White conservatives have steadily built a legal and political movement that claims White people are the primary victims of covert forms of racism embedded in American institutions such as religion, education, and throughout popular culture.
Coates says that while overt, ugly acts of bigotry attract the most attention, the most potent component of racism is “positioning the bigot as the actual victim.”
“So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin,” he wrote. “The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead ‘to’ change the subject and strawman.”
The recent debate over CRT is the latest variation of frame-flipping. But conservatives have used similar tactics to thwart the feminist movement and to notch victories in the culture wars on American campuses.
CRT is a complex subject that can easily be mischaracterized
But it is something more. It is a textbook example of conservative hypocrisy.
Critical race theory opponents borrow from the anti-racists they denounce
Conservatives admonish critical race theorists for saying racism transcends individual prejudice and is embedded in American institutions.
Yet they insist that White Americans are the victims of bias in such institutions as mainstream media, law schools and in corporate America, where some now say that White conservative men can’t get ahead.
Some conservatives deny White privilege but believe in ‘Black privilege’
This belief is reflected in how casually many White people use the language of racial persecution to describe their state in contemporary America, a fear that Trump has stoked for years.
Critics don’t accept CRT’s premise that systemic racism persists in contemporary America.
Like critical race theorists, though, many see racism as a subtle and adaptable force woven into contemporary American institutions — except they believe these racist forces are arrayed against White people.
Opponents of critical race theory follow a well-worn script
This new language of White persecution is no accident. It reflects in part real sentiments from White Americans who are anxious about demographic changes in their country. But it also reflects a strategy.
Much of this can be traced to conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who has vowed to lead a “one-man war” against critical race theory and has been open about his desire to turn CRT into a negative term.
“We have successfully frozen their brand—”critical race theory”—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”
Bending left-leaning language and concepts to attack progressive reforms is something conservatives have been doing for centuries, political theorist Corey Robin argues in “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump.”
In his book, Robin looked at how conservative movements have traditionally specialized in absorbing “the ideas and tactics of the very revolution or reform it opposes.”
Robin cited another cultural war battle that grabbed a lot of headlines not too long ago — the battle over political correctness on college campuses.
He says conservative leaders deftly advised conservative college students to use the language of the left to take on campus liberals. They accused colleges of lacking intellectual “diversity,” said conservatives were “underrepresented” and that schools should be more “inclusive” of right-leaning students.
Robin also pointed to another conservative movement that borrowed the language of the left in the 1970s to defeat a progressive dream: The Equal Rights Amendment, an update to the Constitution that would have guaranteed equal rights to women.
After the feminist movement of the 1960s, ratification for the Equal Rights Amendment seemed assured by the early 1970s. But Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist, led the successful campaign to torpedo the ERA movement by shrewdly using the language of the left.
Schlafly used the language of human rights to “put women back into the home,” Robin noted. He says Schlafly’s semantical maneuver was a common tactic of conservative movements, which, “without directly engaging the progressive argument,” absorb “the deeper categories and idioms of the left.”
Some opponents of critical race theory are using the same ploy. They won’t directly confront what critical race theorists actually say about incidents like George Floyd’s murder and what it implied about the persistence of White supremacy in America. They simply absorb the language of critical race theorists to deflect and discourage any deeper discussions of systemic racism.
“Today’s attacks on critical race theory aren’t meant to rebut its main arguments. They’re meant to paint it with such broad brushstrokes that any basic effort to reckon with the causes and impact of racism in our society can be demonized and dismissed.”
There is a legitimate debate to be had over critical race theory. Does it accurately reflect US history? Does it really teach hatred? And who gets to define racism: its perpetrators, or its victims?
But there is a segment of White conservative America that is not interested in debate. As they dismiss CRT as bogus — while employing its concepts and language to describe their own perceived racial oppression — the message they’re sending to Black Americans, other people of color and their White allies is clear:
“Critical race theory for me — but not for thee.”